<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Who is a threat? Who deserves protection? And who is responsible for providing it?</p><p>Over the past forty years, sanctuary has become a far-reaching concept. Within the realm of immigration, sanctuary has described varied efforts to protect the rights of migrants from deportation, family separation, and other forms of harm. Some local governments, for example, have proclaimed themselves “sanctuary cities,” protecting vulnerable migrants against federal immigration authorities. Other grassroots organizations, in contrast, have seized upon the term to declare sites for “pro-life sanctuaries,” reflecting the volatile debates around women’s reproductive rights. Such different uses of sanctuary demonstrate the unruly and creative ways that this concept has been invoked. At the same time, the diverse meanings of sanctuary today can obscure the complicated history of this concept. </p><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="Button with text, “Support Sanctuary for Refugees of Central American Wars.”" data-delta="1" data-fid="37607" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/2018.0158.186%20Sanctuary_Ed_Sq.jpg"><figcaption>Button supporting refugees from Central America, 1980s (<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search?return_all=1&edan_local=1&edan_q=2018.0158.186&">2018.0158.186</a>)</figcaption></figure></div><p>This blog series, The Politics of Sanctuary, explores the long historical arc of sanctuary, examining how the concept has been applied, redefined, and contested at different moments in the history of the United States. This series emerges from the <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/restorative-history/nation-sanctuary">Nation of Sanctuary initiative</a>, established in 2018, which aims to identify stories of refugees preserved in the Smithsonian’s vast collections and bring them to light. Building off that work, this series investigates the meanings of sanctuary through material culture. We have collaborated with other scholars and public history practitioners who seek to uncover how the varied uses of sanctuary illuminate shifting fault lines in U.S. politics, culture, and society and raise core questions about U.S. values and principles. This series offers the opportunity for readers to question their own assumptions and long-held beliefs about the meanings of sanctuary and its future utility.</p><p>The concept of sanctuary dates back millennia. The origin stories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—including Exodus, Jesus’ birth, and the Hegira—all share themes of refuge from persecution. In medieval Europe, churches provided fugitives with legal protection from blood feuds or harsh sentencing. Despite their religious significance, however, notions of sanctuary also extend to secular domains and everyday life.</p><p>The idea of sanctuary has always been a part of America’s history. Some of its earliest settlers saw British colonies as a place of refuge. People fleeing religious persecution in Europe, including Puritans in the 1630s and exiled Huguenots in the 1680s, immigrated to the colonies in search of sanctuary from religious conflicts. Ironically, in their quest for religious freedoms and protection, these early colonists took those rights and safeties from Native peoples (along with their lands). Indeed, subjugated peoples would find no sanctuary in early America but would need sanctuary from it. Refuge for one meant harm for another.</p><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="Rock decorated with a text label that includes “Broken from the Mother Rock by Mr. Lewis Bradford on Tuesday 28th of December 1830 4 1/4 O clock PM. The Pilgrims Landed upon this Rock December 11th 1620”" data-delta="2" data-fid="37608" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/PL.012058_NMAH-RWS2012-04276.jpg"><figcaption>In the early 1800s, tourists visiting Plymouth Rock could hammer off a piece of the rock as a souvenir. By 1880, what was left of the rock was fenced off within a memorial. (<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_523279">PL.012058</a>)</figcaption></figure></div><p>In the first half of the 1800s, the concept of sanctuary gained new purchase, particularly under the institution of slavery. Enslaved people who escaped bondage and fled along the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/undergroundrailroad/what-is-the-underground-railroad.htm">Underground Railroad</a> gained protection, food, and shelter from abolitionists.</p><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="Harriet Tubman, standing, wearing a shawl and skirt, her hair wrapped in a kerchief" data-delta="3" data-fid="37609" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/NPG-NPG_2006_86Tubman_d1.jpg"><figcaption>Photograph of Harriet Araminta Tubman, around 1885. Tubman escaped slavery in 1849 and guided other enslaved people to freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Courtesy of Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. (<a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2006.86?destination=portraits">NPG.2006.86</a>)</figcaption></figure></div><p>During the Civil War, “contraband camps” in Union-occupied territories became important places of refuge for African Americans escaping bondage. But these camps posed a major contradiction. Self-emancipated people fled the violence of slavery only to endure hazardously crowded camps, military conscription, and anti-Black racism by guardians and camp administrators.</p><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="A Black man seated in a chair, shoeless, wearing a hat and tattered overcoat." data-delta="1" data-fid="37610" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/NPG-B6000036C.jpg"><figcaption>Photograph of “Gordon,” who escaped from bondage and sought refuge with U.S. troops, 1862. Courtesy of Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. (<a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2016.18?destination=edan-search/default_search%3Fedan_local%3D1%26edan_q%3DNPG.2016.18">NPG.2016.18</a>).</figcaption></figure></div><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="The front and back of a stereograph. Its front shows an image of uniformed Black men standing in a line in front of a wagon. Along each side of the stereograph, one can see the text, “The War for the Union.”" data-delta="4" data-fid="37611" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/NMAAHC-2018_105_9_001-002.jpg"><figcaption>Albumen print stereograph titled “No. 2594. ‘Contrabands’ made happy by employment as army teamsters. This shows a glimpse of their first ‘free’ home; being their winter quarters near City Point, Va.” Published 1890. Courtesy of Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. (<a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2018.105.9">2018.105.9</a>)</figcaption></figure></div><p>Such contradictions remained in the wake of the Civil War, as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, known as the “Freedmen’s Bureau,” supervised African Americans’ passage from slavery to freedom. As the efforts of Reconstruction yielded to the pressures of tenacious racism, Black people would find their liberation and citizenship curtailed, which required an enduring need for sanctuary, even to the present.</p><p>The endless wars of the 1900s redefined the meaning of sanctuary. Migrants displaced by global conflicts such as the First and Second World Wars, and later the global Cold War, have looked to the United States for refuge. Sanctuary was not simply about “the right to seek . . . asylum from persecution,” as enshrined in the 1948 United Nations’s Declaration of Human Rights. It was also entangled in U.S. foreign policy concerns. During the Cold War, the United States offered sanctuary to select groups of migrants who could advance foreign policy agendas, such as Hungarian, Cuban, and Hmong refugees, particularly individuals who expressed anticommunist sentiments. The U.S. government seized on stories of refugees who “voted with their feet” against communist governments to promote the United States as a beacon of freedom.</p><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="A well-worn canvas backpack with leather trim" data-delta="5" data-fid="37612" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/2016.0244.02_AHB2016r02420.jpg"><figcaption>Backpack donated by George Sarlo, a former refugee who fled Hungary in 1956 and found temporary refuge in Austria before resettling in the United States. (<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1817886">2016.0244.02</a>)</figcaption></figure></div><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="A gray sports jacket." data-delta="6" data-fid="37613" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/2017.0252.01_NMAH-AHB2017q027218.jpg"><figcaption>Hector Aguilar, journalist and senior anchor at WNJU in New Jersey, wore this jacket. Aguilar, a Cuban refugee who migrated to the United States in the 1960s, worked in broadcasting from an early age and made a career in radio and television. (<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1849048">2017.0252.01</a>)</figcaption></figure></div><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="A quilted textile depicting many people surrounding airplanes and other modes of transportation." data-delta="7" data-fid="37614" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/2011.0116.01_JN2018-01957.jpg"><figcaption>This quilted textile was created by Lia Vue Vang. The story cloth narrates the history of the “secret war” in Laos (1959–1975) and the consequent displacement and migration of Hmong people as refugees. (<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1412784">2011.0116.01</a>)</figcaption></figure></div><p>Providing sanctuary to refugees, however, has never been a transparent nor equal process. When tens of thousands of Haitians fled Haiti for fear of political persecution in the 1970s, and more than 125,000 Cubans arrived on U.S. shores in 1980, both groups were detained in immigration processing centers. U.S. immigration officials rejected their asylum claims, demonstrating that not all refugees were considered deserving of sanctuary. When compared to the calculated reception of Hungarian, Cuban, and Southeast Asian refugees from previous decades, the disparate treatment of Haitian and Cuban migrants raised persistent questions over who gets to claim sanctuary in the United States.</p><p>The politics of sanctuary is more than a history of human migrations. The concept also speaks to a history of how we think about land and how we relate to different types of spaces. The United States doesn’t only provide refuge to humans under duress, but has sought to protect natural spaces and nonhuman species. Indeed, U.S. national parks have adopted the lexicon of sanctuary to preserve “pristine” natural beauty and to protect the flora and fauna that exist within their boundaries.</p><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="A metal pin showing a tree and the text, “Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary” and “Audobon of Florida.”" data-delta="8" data-fid="37616" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/AHB2017q014658_Ed_Sq.jpg"><figcaption>Pin for the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary Audobon of Florida. (<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1284548">2003.0014.1036</a>)</figcaption></figure></div><div class="align-center"><figure class="image file-default media-element"><img alt="Button with two illustrated racoons and the text “Ignacio Wildlife Sanctuary.”" data-delta="9" data-fid="37617" data-media-element="1" rel="lightbox" src="https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/2003.0014.0827_2004-13552-S_Ed_Sq.jpg"><figcaption>Ignacio Wildlife Sanctuary pin. This pin and the one above are part of a collection of more than 1,500 buttons reflecting the various concerns of the environmental movement between the 1970s and the 2000s. (<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1284858">2003.0014.0827</a>)</figcaption></figure></div><p>And yet, even these wildlife sanctuaries come with a more sinister history. Establishing parks pushed Native peoples from their generational homelands. These sanctuaries for nature led to the expulsion of Indigenous people who had already been protecting the land, air, and water for generations.</p><p>The meaning of sanctuary has changed across time, but the concept still maintains its power. Perhaps sanctuary’s flexible meaning helps explain why it has attained such force and appeal. Through this series, we invite readers to join us as we explore complicated histories that pose thorny and sometimes irresolvable questions. As you read through the posts, what other histories of sanctuary come to mind for you? How do these very different stories and their varied contexts relate to each other? What do they tell us about the United States and our relationship to it?</p><p><em>Dr. Sam Vong is the curator of Asian Pacific American History in the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History.</em></p><p><em>Dr. A. Naomi Paik is the author of </em>Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the 21st Century<em> (2020) and </em>Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II<em> (2016). She is an associate professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, in Criminology, Law, and Justice, as well as Global Asian Studies.</em></p><p><em>Special thanks to Jordan Grant, digital experience specialist, for his assistance in developing this blog series.</em></p><p><em>This blog series has received funding support from the Smithsonian’s Latino Initiatives Pool and the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool.</em></p><div style="background-color:#e9e5e4; border:none; padding:12px"><h2>The Politics of Sanctuary</h2><ul><li><a href="/blog/politics-of-sanctuary">Introducing: The Politics of Sanctuary</a></li><li><a href="/blog/origins-sanctuary-movement">The origins of the Sanctuary Movement</a></li><li><a href="/blog/new-sanctuary-movement">Deportations in the 21st century and the New Sanctuary Movement</a></li><li><a href="/blog/seek-asylum">What is it like to seek asylum in the United States?</a></li></ul></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authors field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Author(s): </div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A. Naomi Paik and Sam Vong </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-posted-date field-type-datetime field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Posted Date: </div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Tuesday, June 20, 2023 - 08:00</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories</h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-tags/collections">From the Collections</a></li><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-1"><a href="/blog-tags/african-american-history">African American History</a></li><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-2"><a href="/blog-tags/native-american-history">Native American History</a></li><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-3"><a href="/blog-tags/latino-history-culture">Latino History & Culture</a></li></ul></div>
